Election

The Republican’s Dr. Strangelove Promotes Book By Nazi Sympathizer On Fox News

Posted by on July 17, 2014 at 7:18 pm. 10 Comments :

In the most recent polling of Republican voters, their top choices for president almost always include Dr. Ben Carson, the neurosurgeon-turned-Fox News pundit who viscerally hates President Obama and advocates Christian supremacy in America.

Carson appeared on Megyn Kelly’s Fox News program last night to warn that the United States is “going down the tubes” like the great empires of the past because we have “become enamored of sports and entertainment,” and have “lost our moral compass.” This downward spiral, Carson says, is an extremely dangerous situation that threatens to subject America to the same dreadful fate as previous historical dynasties like Greece, Rome, and Britain.

Ben Carson

The segment was mostly a paper thin discourse on vague apocalyptic generalities that provided scant insight into anything other than Carson’s embarrassingly poor grasp of history and government. His main points were cliched right-wing admonitions against progressivism and straying from Christian faith. And in the midst of this harangue, Carson made a note of the risks of divisiveness:

Kelly: To what extent do you feel divisiveness is playing a role in what we’re seeing right now?
Carson: It’s playing an extremely large role in what we are doing.

In what “WE” are doing? That was certainly a clumsy phrasing that Carson would probably like to retract. However, it is also ironically truthful. For the better part of the eight minute segment Carson was fiercely divisive, referring to his ideological foes as neo-Marxists, specifically aligning them with Marx, Lenin, and one of the right’s favorite bogeymen, Saul Alinsky. Which is why his unintended admission that divisiveness plays a large role in what “WE” are doing rings true.

Even Kelly observed that calling people neo-Marxists could cause others to view him as unpresidential and too extreme to ever be elected president. Carson’s response to that was to encourage viewers to do their own research. He then offered this as an example of the sort of troubling things they would find:

Carson: Number one rule of Saul Alinsky: You make the majority think that what they believe is no longer in vogue; that nobody with any intelligence thinks that way; and that the way you believe is the only way that intelligent people believe.

The only problem with that example is that it does not happen to be the number one rule of Saul Alinsky. Nor is it any other rule. It appears that Carson just made it up as it doesn’t even resemble any of the actual rules that Alinsky laid out in his book “Rules For Radicals”. Or, more likely, he adopted it from some disreputable source that he naively believed. [For reference I have included all of Alinsky’s Rules for Radicals at the bottom of this post] But it wasn’t until Carson sought to buttress his criticism with additional girders of fringy philosophy that he went spinning off the rails entirely. And in the process he demonstrated how vulnerable he is to disreputable sources.

Carson: There was a guy who was a former CIA agent by the name of Cleon Skousen who wrote a book in 1958 called “The Naked Communist,” that laid out the whole agenda. You would think by reading it that it was written last year. Showing what they’re trying to do to American families, what they’re trying to do to our Judeo-Christian faith, what they’re doing to morality.

W. Cleon Skousen was a disgraced Mormon whackjob whom even the Mormon church repudiated. He was a rabid anti-communist who veered off into conspiracy theories and fabricated prophecy. His extreme views led him to support other contemporary opponents of communism, better known as Nazis. And for good measure, Carson shares his admiration of Skousen with another popular whackjob, Glenn Beck, who insisted that his followers read Skousen’s “The 5,000 Year Leap,” which Beck said was divinely inspired.

And so it has come to pass that Ben Carson is the darling of the Tea Party and other far-right dimwits. It is a strange love, so to speak, because despite having absolutely zero expertise in government, law, social sciences, public service, or any other study relevant to statecraft, the Republican base has embraced him and are striving mightily to persuade him to throw his hat in the ring for the presidency, a job for which he is profoundly unqualified.

Shameless self-promotion…
Get Fox Nation vs. Reality. Available now at Amazon.

But what is truly dumbfounding is that he isn’t much less qualified than many of the other prospective GOP candidates (Ted Cruz, Rand Paul, Marco Rubio) or candidates past (Michele Bachmann, Donald Trump, Herman Cain, Sarah Palin). Scary, isn’t it?

From Saul Alinsky’s Rules For Radicals:

  • Power is not only what you have, but what the enemy thinks you have.
  • Never go outside the expertise of your people.
  • Whenever possible, go outside the expertise of the enemy.
  • Make the enemy live up to its own book of rules.
  • Ridicule is man’s most potent weapon.
  • A good tactic is one your people enjoy.
  • A tactic that drags on too long becomes a drag.
  • Keep the pressure on. Never let up.
  • The threat is usually more terrifying than the thing itself.
  • The major premise for tactics is the development of operations that will maintain a constant pressure upon the opposition.
  • If you push a negative hard enough, it will push through and become a positive.
  • The price of a successful attack is a constructive alternative.
  • Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it.

Desperate Wingnuts Revive The “Hillary Cackle” In Lame Attack On Clinton

Posted by on July 17, 2014 at 10:59 am. 4 Comments :

When you’ve got absolutely nothing with which to criticize your political opponent, then resort to childish and sexist personal insults. That’s the Republican strategy for taking on Hillary Clinton’s possible campaign for the presidency.

Fox Nation Hillary Clinton

The Fox News community website (and lie-riddled propaganda rag) Fox Nation proudly posted a video compilation of Hillary Clinton’s appearance on The Daily Show Tuesday that consisted of only her laughing at Jon Stewart’s jokes (video below). This is the best evidence yet that right-wingers have completely run out of ideas and have concluded that their only hope of beating Clinton, should she run, is to act like snotty little brats by making fun of irrelevant personal traits.

This should also help to drive away virtually every woman voter from the transparently anti-woman GOP. It’s not enough that Republicans want to deny reproductive health care, allow corporations to come between women and their doctors, vote against equal pay, oppose non-discrimination, cut funding for single mothers and day care, and just this week, advise Republican men to talk “down to a woman’s level.” Nope, now they have to lower the bar even further with lame insults.

Media Matters compiled a surprisingly long list of press references to Clinton’s laughter during the 2008 campaign. It was characterized as everything from a “cackle” to a “maniacal giggle,” but always in manner that was distinctly sexist. Comparing one’s laugh to witches and harpies is not something that would be done to male politicians.

The video posted by the Fox Nationalists was provided by the ultra-rightist Washington Free Beacon, a pseudo-news enterprise that is run by Republican operatives and affiliated with the Koch brothers. So the partisan parentage of this silliness is clear. It’s also clear that the people responsible were emotionally stunted at sometime around junior high school. If this is representative of the campaign tactics that Clinton will face if she decides to run, then she’s got an open path to the White House.

Here is the video from the Free Beacon’s edit of Clinton on The Daily Show:

And here is video of Fox News mocking Clinton’s laugh six years ago:

Days Of Our Lies: This Means Warren – The Clash Of Hillary And Elizabeth

Posted by on July 7, 2014 at 9:46 am. 5 Comments :

The saga of the Clinton Dynasty continues on Fox News as they deliver a new episode of their blithering soap opera, Days of Our Lies.

Days of Our Lies

In the last chapter, you will recall that disgraced author Edward Klein laughably asserted that he had access to private conversations between Hillary and Bill Clinton. In those intimate liaisons it was revealed that Hillary was sinking into despair and losing her enthusiasm for public service. That despite the fact that she is handily out-polling all of her potential Democratic and Republican rivals.

The story continues with another excerpt from Klein’s new book wherein he is still managing to get insider scoops that any rational person would know are unavailable to the likes of him. He again cites sources who we are supposed to believe are among the closest confidants to the Clintons, yet are betraying them by blabbing to the right-wing media’s most vociferous and vicious Clinton enemy. Klein’s account of the private world inside the Clinton fortress includes these unlikely scenarios:

“President Obama has quietly promised Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren complete support if she runs for president — a stinging rebuke to his nemesis Hillary Clinton.”

“Obama has authorized his chief political adviser, Valerie Jarrett, to conduct a full-court press to convince Warren to throw her hat into the ring.”

“The Obamas believe that Warren sees things from the same ideological point of view as they do. She is a committed progressive who, like Obama, wants to transform America into a European-style democratic-socialist state.”

“Both Valerie and Michelle Obama have convinced the president that Elizabeth Warren is his Mini-Me.”

Warren, of course, has said repeatedly and emphatically that she is not running for president. She pledged explicitly to finish her term in the senate which ends in 2019. She even signed a letter, along with fellow senate Democrats, urging Clinton to run for President. These are not typical actions by someone plotting to mount an opposition candidacy in pursuit of a shared dream of European socialism.

Nevertheless, Fox News, along with their partner in melodrama, the New York Post (which is also their partner in the notoriously dishonest Murdoch media empire) are providing a platform for Klein’s delusional chronicles. Not only is there no evidence that any of Klein’s ravings are true, there is no conceivable way that he could have had access to the encounters that he is pretending to describe. And to top it all off, Fox illustrates the article with a deceptively edited photo that makes it appear that Obama and Warren are about to lock lips in a heated embrace.

Shameless self-promotion…
Get Fox Nation vs. Reality. Available now at Amazon.

However, like the soap operas that are broadcast on other daytime television programs, the audience of gullible wingnuts is woefully undiscriminating and will believe whatever is put in front of them by the yarn spinners at Fox. Stay tuned for the next episode of Days of Our Lies, brought to you by Fox News, when Hillary reveals that she is hopelessly in love with daughter Chelsea’s husband, who has gone missing after stumbling unto a mysterious Kenyan birth certificate.

Days Of Our Lies: The Epically Stupid Fox News Soap Opera Starring Hillary Clinton

Posted by on June 30, 2014 at 1:58 pm. 5 Comments :

Much of the routine disinformation and scandal mongering that is the core of Fox News programming is designed to produce melodrama in order to enrapt their dimwitted viewers and warp their grasp of world affairs. It is key to the editorial philosophy of Fox’s chairman and CEO, Roger Ailes, who conceived the “Orchestra Pit” theory of journalism.

Fox News Soap Opera

Shameless self-promotion…
Get Fox Nation vs. Reality. Available now at Amazon.

So it is no wonder that Fox would recruit Edward Klein, an author so disreputable that he has been renounced by a broad range of critics, both liberal and conservative. As an example of his derangement, he once wrote that Chelsea Clinton was the spawn of Bill after raping his lesbian wife, Hillary. Now, in an editorial for Fox titled “Hillary down in the dumps: Is Clinton about to drop out of 2016 race?”, Klein delivers an account of a conversation between Bill and Hillary Clinton to which he could not possibly have had access without having hidden in the broom closet. Here is the opening scene:

“During a recent break in her national book tour, Hillary Clinton sat at her kitchen table in Chappaqua, N.Y., rubbing her forehead. She had been experiencing splitting headaches and was finding it increasingly difficult to hide the throbbing pain in her head while doing television interviews.”

From his vantage point in the closet, Klein managed to observe Clinton alone in her kitchen nursing her headache and sinking into despair. His representation of her mood is in stark contrast with the video evidence of her media interviews where she appears to be engaged and upbeat. Klein also contends that she is depressed because her book is an historic flop. However, that is also contrary to the facts. But the real drama has yet to begin.

Enter Bill Clinton, who Klein apparently observed as he “poured Hillary a glass of green tea, and massaged her shoulders.” Then, in the privacy of their kitchen, unaware of the guest in the closet, they began to discuss the hardships of her book tour and prospective presidential campaign. And for some reason they chose to speak in a dialog that emulated junior high school playacting. Here is the script exactly as Klein “heard” it:

Hillary: The media have me in their cross-hairs. Everything I say is twisted and used against me. I can’t get any traction. They are pouncing on everything I say.

Hillary hesitated for a moment, and then continued.

Hillary: I’m seriously losing my appetite for combat. I never thought I’d say that. I’ve been a fighter all my life. You guys have never seen me back down, but right now I am punch drunk.

Bill bit his lip and said…

Bill: We all have a right to feel sorry for ourselves from time to time. But you’ve got history to make.

Hillary: Right now I’m feeling like they can all go f**k themselves. I know the country needs us, but they aren’t acting like they deserve us. Just f**k ‘me (sic).

Bill: We’re going to fight and win the White House. That will be our reward and our revenge.

It would be one thing if this was a fanciful dramatization of a conversation that Klein imagined might have taken place. But he is offering it as a factual account of an actual discussion between two people in their own home. And Fox News was so impressed with its veracity that they went ahead and published it. But anyone who believes that this is how adults talk, particularly Yale-educated lawyers with decades of political experience, is flakier than a day-old croissant.

It’s pathetic that Fox would post this nonsense, but it’s even worse that they know their audience so well that they can have a fair measure of confidence that it will be accepted as reality.

Crybaby McDaniel Caught Lying About Black Votes

Posted by on June 27, 2014 at 12:59 pm. 7 Comments :

Last week’s Republican primary in Mississippi has stirred a frenzied response from Tea Party wackos who are convinced that the nomination was stolen by brigades of law-breaking African-Americans (is there any other kind to the right?). Loser Chris McDaniel has still refused to concede the race to incumbent Thad Cochran.

cochran-mcdaniel-2

AT&T and Verizon users: Stop funding the Tea Party.
Switch to CREDO Mobile, the progressive cell phone company, today!

McDaniel appeared on Fox News last night with ardent support Sean Hannity. He told Hannity of his suspicions of massive electoral foul play, although he offered no evidence. McDaniel said that…

“We’re looking into the issue of whether or not people who participated in the June the 3rd Democratic primary crossed over into the Republican primary this Tuesday night. And we’ve already found more than a thousand examples of that in one county alone.”

This morning Pete Perry, the Republican Party Chairman of Hinds County, to which McDaniel was referring, issued a statement refuting the unfounded charges. In the statement Perry included an example of just how far removed McDaniel is from reality.

“As a committee, we are still in the process of going through the election results before they can be certified, but this morning we can discuss some of the specific examples that were raised yesterday.

“As an example in Precinct 14, the Fondren Presbyterian Church precinct, the numbers cited by the McDaniel campaign yesterday included 192 ‘illegal votes’ – people that they claimed had voted in the Democrat primary on June 3rd but then voted in the Republican run-off. That is impossible. According to the certified results of the June 3rd Democrat primary, there were only 37 total Democrat primary voters at that particular precinct.”

So McDaniel claimed that there were 192 illegal Democratic votes in a precinct that had only 37 Democratic votes total. That’s a pretty good indication that McDaniel’s complaints are pile of certified rubbish. He is just an egomaniacal sore loser who is certain that a secret cabal of Republicans and Democrats are conspiring against his holy Teabagger crusade. When all that actually happened is that voters acted lawfully to choose a candidate that is not McDaniel, and Cochran was smart enough to employ all legal measures to achieve his victory.

Oddly enough, I agree with McDaniel’s opposition to Democrats selecting Republican candidates, and vice versa. This is only possible due to the enactment of open primaries where people from any party are permitted to vote regardless of their registration. This was never a good idea because political party candidates should only be selected by members of their own parties. Why on earth should a Democrat get to choose who the GOP puts up for office? However, the open primary movement was a creation of right-wingers who saw it as a method of unseating entrenched Democratic incumbents. For instance, in California in 2010, open primaries were enacted via an initiative that was put on the ballot by a Republican state senator and supported by GOP governor Arnold Schwarzenegger.

Now that this hare-brained concept has come back to bite them in the ass, the Tea Party is furious at what a perversion of democracy their idea actually is. So what do they do in response? Do they retract their support for open primaries and commence a campaign to end them? Of course not. They claim that black criminals have perverted the electoral process and steps must be taken to invalidate their votes. That should help the GOP’s outreach to minority constituents as much as flying a Confederate flag at their campaign rallies will.

The upside of this affair is that the Democratic senate candidate in Mississippi, Travis Childers, just saw his chances of winning in a deep red state increase substantially. McDaniel’s delusional supporters are so upset at Cochran that many of them are already declaring that they will not vote for him in November. Some are even talking about a write-in candidacy for McDaniel, or launching a third Party campaign, which Sarah Palin has been hinting at. When this is all over, the Democrats may have to send McDaniel a thank you card.

GOP vs. Tea: Snookered By Neocon Zealots On Talk Radio, Fox News, And Elsewhere

Posted by on June 23, 2014 at 7:37 pm. 2 Comments :

The primary race for the Republican senate nomination in Mississippi has taken some sharp turns on the road to Crazy Town. This is a race that has seen a blogger associated with one candidate, Chris McDaniel, sneak into a nursing home to surreptitiously take photos of the ailing wife of his opponent, Thad Cochran. Some other McDaniel operatives managed to get themselves locked inside a courtroom on election night with that precinct’s ballots. As for Cochran, he told an amused audience that he grew up in Mississippi having fun doing “all kinds of indecent things with animals.”

Republican Tea Party

AT&T and Verizon users: Stop funding the Tea Party.
Switch to CREDO Mobile, the progressive cell phone company, today!

So who would have thought that on the eve of the election runoff, one of the most coherent analyses of modern politics would emerge from the daughter of one these candidates? Kate Cochran posted her impressions of the race on her Facebook page a couple of days ago, and if more Republicans had the insight that she demonstrates here in support of her father’s struggling campaign, democracy would take a huge leap forward. Here are some excerpts beginning with the an apt appraisal of the media.

“I think that Mississippians are being snookered by neocon zealots on talk radio, Fox News, and elsewhere.”

Clearly Kate is paying attention. Fox News, and a confederacy of wingnut pundits, have led the Tea Party parade to replace “establishment” Republicans with ignoramuses who robotically spout pre-chewed Teabaggerisms. It is something for which the GOP should feel profoundly embarrassed. She goes on…

“The New Right values extremism, obstructionism, partisanship, and–frankly–ignorance. I am disappointed to realize that the New Right seems to want to walk hand-in-hand with the horrible strain of anti-intellectualism that sees universities as vocational schools and vilifies anyone expert in a field as somehow not living in the ‘real world’ or representative of ‘real people.'”

Anti-intellectualism is a hallmark of the New Right. They ridicule graduates of Harvard and Yale as being unable to relate to “regular” folk. But the whole notion of wanting someone “regular” to assume the responsibilities of shaping the future of our nation is unfathomably idiotic. Would these dimwits also want a yokel to perform their heart surgery? The point of electing a representative is to have the best possible person in a position to make the hard decisions. Kate gets this right when she notes that McDaniel’s supporters value him for his lack.

“Lack of experience (he is not a ‘career politician.’) Lack of wisdom (he relies solely on Jesus, the Constitution, and ‘common’ sense–combined in the veneer of ‘goodness’). Lack of judgment (he vows to refuse federal monies and to try to impede legislation). […] I see these ‘qualities’ as a disingenuous pose, engineered to appeal to the very worst in our electorate.”

Indeed. If all voters are looking for is affirmation of their biblical fears and shallow interpretations of constitutional principles that border on another form of worship, then the Tea Party is their ideal political savior. But like religion, the Tea Party is focused mostly on imminent disaster and destruction. The economy is collapsing; morality and family are under attack; freedom is slipping away; and the devil is ushering in a communist/Muslim millennium of torment. They have no solutions, only harbingers of doom. Kate closes with this personal perspective:

“I find his campaign appalling on intellectual, moral, and idealist levels. The fact that Mississippi voters are even considering his candidacy saddens me more than I can say. Mississippi used to be recognized as the most backward, prejudiced, ignorant holdback in our nation, hands down. This sea change makes me very afraid that we might deserve that mantle.”

What’s really sad is that it takes this sort of political smack in the head for many Republicans to grasp just how dangerous and ignorant the Tea Party and its disciples are. It’s encouraging that Kate has come around, and her articulate passion is moving and profound. But the sort of experience that inspired it is not likely to be shared by many others. Consequently, America will continue to be saddled with this mindless cult of stooges who unknowingly help cloistered billionaires to shape a world that keeps them oppressed. At least for a while.

GOPee Yew: What The Media Isn’t Telling You About Obama’s Poll Numbers

Posted by on June 18, 2014 at 2:48 pm. 5 Comments :

A new NBC/Wall Street Journal poll (pdf) has some decidedly bad news for President Obama. The American people, according to this survey, are losing patience with the President and expressing it with low opinions of his job performance, foreign policy, and leadership. It is a distinct concern for him as his administration heads into its final two years.

That said, the news isn’t all bad. But far be it for the media to put the results in context so that people get a balanced perspective of the nation’s mood. In addition to the floundering numbers, there are some areas that ought to produce some optimism for the President and those aligned with his policies. First among them is the fact that, while Obama’s numbers are nothing to write home about, his political rivals are doing so much worse that may want to run away from home.

NBC/Wall Street Journal Poll

AT&T and Verizon users: Stop funding the Tea Party.
Switch to CREDO Mobile, the progressive cell phone company, today!

Both the President and his party are putting the Republicans to shame. He is 30% more popular than the Republican Party, and nearly 50% more popular than the laughably inane Tea Party. If his presidency is over, as some right-wing pundits are gleefully claiming, what does that mean for conservatives?

And that’s not all. When asked which party they prefer to control Congress, respondents chose Democrats over Republicans by 45% to 43%. The poll also reports that progressive positions on prominent issues are far more popular than those of conservatives. For instance, respondents support the Common Core education initiative 59/31. They believe that immigration helps rather than hurts the nation 47/42. They advocate action on climate change 61/37. They approve of Obama’s recent move to set strict carbon dioxide emission limits 67/29.

Clearly the electorate is in a bad mood, and they are taking it out, with justification, on their representatives. But when directly asked about solutions to the problems that affect them most, they consistently respond with agreement for the liberal agenda.

So why doesn’t the press report that? This is the so-called “liberal” media we’re talking about. Apparently they are not as driven by partisanship as right-wingers would have you believe with all of their childish carping. More likely the media is driven by ratings and revenue. In that regard, conflict and drama have always been a bigger draw than harmony. It’s the same reason that local news features murders and car chases, rather than more uplifting stories.

Obama has some work to do to counteract the effect of the relentlessly negative coverage he receives. Even the arrest of a suspect in the Benghazi attack drew absurd criticisms from Fox News and other wingnut media. But in the interim, it is important to look below the surface to see the whole story. And what this survey is telling us is that if Democrats run on progressive policies they are more likely to achieve success at the polls later this year and in 2016.

Fox Nation vs. Reality: Hillary Clinton’s High Ethical Standards Infuriate Fox News

Posted by on June 16, 2014 at 12:34 pm. 5 Comments :

The folks at Fox Nation are working overtime to unearth scandals they can attribute to Hillary Clinton. Lately their crack(head) reporters have discovered that, although Clinton did leave the White House in debt, she later made lots of money (Oh my!). They ferreted out that she is no longer young (You don’t say?). They alleged that she had suffered brain damage (Uh-oh!). And they continually try (and fail) to blame her for Benghazi. But now they may have hit on a charge that could stick: Hillary Clinton is an ethical attorney! (Yikes!)

Fox Nation

For more documented examples of Fox Nation lies…
Get Fox Nation vs. Reality. Available now at Amazon.

The Fox Nationalists posted an article that they sourced to the ultra-rightist Washington Free Beacon announcing the discovery of “The Hillary Tapes” from deep within the – well, the very public archives of the University of Arkansas, Fayetteville. The release of these tapes were intended to tarnish Clinton’s reputation as an advocate for abused women and children. The article began saying that…

“In 1975, the same year she married Bill, Hillary Clinton agreed to serve as the court-appointed attorney for Thomas Alfred Taylor, a 41-year-old accused of raping the child after luring her into a car.

“The recordings, which date from 1983-1987 and have never before been reported, include Clinton’s suggestion that she knew Taylor was guilty at the time. She says she used a legal technicality to plead her client, who faced 30 years to life in prison, down to a lesser charge.

“The full story of the Taylor defense calls into question Clinton’s narrative of her early years as a devoted women and children’s advocate in Arkansas—a narrative the 2016 presidential frontrunner continues to promote on her current book tour.”

Apparently the Fox Nationalists, and their ignorant pals at the Free Beacon, are unaware of the constitutional provision that grants all defendants the right to competent counsel. It is the responsibility of the attorney to work on behalf of the client’s best interests regardless of guilt or innocence. And in this case Clinton did just that after being assigned the case by the court. It would have been unethical to do anything else.

What’s more, the “technicality” that Clinton employed was that the lab contracted by the prosecutor had lost the material evidence in the case. That’s a pretty significant technicality. The defense can’t examine or rebut, nor can the state convict, on evidence that doesn’t exist.

So Clinton did her job as the law requires her to do. And for demonstrating those strong principles Fox tries to twist the story into something negative. Instead, they expose themselves as opponents of the Constitution and those who respect it. Descending to these depths of dishonesty in order to demean Clinton tells us something about Fox in the clearest terms: They are staggeringly scared of Clinton and the prospect of her candidacy in 2016.

How The Media Got EVERYTHING Wrong About Cantor’s Primary Defeat

Posted by on June 14, 2014 at 1:51 pm. 6 Comments :

Last week a tsunami of shock washed over the Washington press corps as the second highest Republican in congress was swept overboard in a primary race against an unknown Tea Party opponent. Eric Cantor’s embarrassing loss has sparked debate as to how such a powerful GOP leader could have been caught looking. Unfortunately, the media contribution to the debate is rife with speculation and error.

Koch-Cycle Dave Brat

AT&T and Verizon users: Stop funding the Tea Party.
Switch to CREDO Mobile, the progressive cell phone company, today!

First off all, the characterization of Cantor’s opponent, Dave Brat, as an outsider who sprung from the grassroots to slay Goliath is a reflection of the shallowness of the research conducted by the mainstream media. Thom Hartmann went deeper and discovered that Brat was on the radar of the billionaire Koch brothers long before he launched his allegedly underdog campaign. Koch-affiliated financiers endowed Randolph-Macon College with half a million dollars to seat the Ayn Rand disciple as a trickle-down economics professor. Then, when the campaign commenced, radio talk show hosts like Laura Ingraham and Mark Levin took the baton and fervently promoted Brat’s candidacy. Ingraham and Levin are just a couple of the radio talkers who are sponsored by Koch front groups like Americans for Prosperity.

This brings us to the second point. The media repeatedly cast a spotlight on the campaign spending differential between Cantor and Brat. Cantor raised more than $5,000,000 compared to Brat’s $200,000. Many reporters latched onto the amusing anecdote that Cantor spent more on steak dinners than Brat spent in total. However, what they failed to take into consideration was the value of the airtime contributed by the likes of Ingraham, Levin, Beck, Limbaugh, Fox News, et al. It could cost a couple of hundred dollars for a thirty second spot on a high performing radio program. Extrapolate that to twenty or thirty minutes of direct advocacy by the the program’s host every day for a month or two and you could easily have exceeded Cantor’s budget for broadcast advertising.

Adding in the value of the donated airtime rips apart the third fallacy peddled in the press – that Brat’s low cost campaign disproves the contention that money makes the difference in elections. This is a target that has been in the sights of conservatives since the Citizen’s United debacle in the Supreme Court. The rush to exonerate wealthy donors of having any untoward impact on electoral outcomes was head-spinning. Every right-wing pundit with a microphone hailed the demise of the theory that cash-laden campaigns had an unfair advantage. In truth, Brat’s campaign was far richer than acknowledged due to the media support detailed above. But even if there were no other factors, a win by a single candidate in one race surely doesn’t negate the fact that in 99.99% of other races the better financed candidate prevails. If the right is so convinced that Brat’s showing proves that money doesn’t matter, I dare any of them to announce that they are halting their fundraising and capping their spending at $200,000.

Fourth: Tea Party supporters were quick to jump on Brat’s win as evidence of a Tea Party resurgence. In just about every other race this cycle, the Tea Party challenger lost to an establishment incumbent. With Brat’s resounding victory, they claim to have regained their mojo. But the only way they can make that argument is if they forget that they lost just about every other race this cycle.

Finally, the Washington set is dead certain that Brat’s triumph was due to his stance against immigration. After all, he did feature it in his campaign ads and it was a point of departure between him and Cantor. Unfortunately for those who seem to have a desperate yearning for that to be true, polling on the day of the election proved otherwise. Public Policy Polling released the survey showing that “72 percent of registered voters in Cantor’s district polled on Tuesday said they either ‘strongly’ or ‘somewhat’ support immigration reform.” And the anti-immigration forces conveniently ignore the fact that on the same day Sen. Lindsey Graham, an establishment, pro-immigration candidate, from an even more conservative state, handily dispatched a slew of Tea Partiers. More likely, the problem for Cantor was that he mustered only a 43% job performance approval, just a couple points off of his losing election results.

So Dave Brat won a peculiar contest in Virginia where he had hidden support from billionaires and an opponent who was widely disliked. Then he disappears and refuses to speak to the voters he hopes will be his constituents. It’s been three days and he hasn’t held a post election press conference. And yet the press continues to misrepresent the realities that produced the results of this election. It’s a state of affairs that proves that Cantor wasn’t the only loser last week. The voters and others who rely on the media to provide useful information and analysis also lost. But they should be used to that by now.

Fox News Is STILL Killing The Republican Party

Posted by on June 12, 2014 at 4:30 pm. 15 Comments :

Once again, an academic study of the American electorate has found that “Fox News Republicans are the most uninformed.” This new survey was conducted by the Brookings Institution along with the Public Religion Research Institute. What’s different about this study is that it does not merely pit Republicans against Democrats and Independents. It distinguishes between Republicans who regularly watch Fox News and those who don’t. And the conclusions reveal that Fox News Republicans are even more uninformed and extreme in their views than their non-fox viewing comrades in the same party.

Go Fox Yourself

What this tells us is that Fox News is polluting the Republicans who tune in to the network with reporting and commentary that is biased, misleading, and downright false. The ideological corruption is evident in some basic political differences between the Foxies and the Foxless. For instance, the DREAM Act was drafted to permit undocumented residents who came to the U.S. as children, and either completed college or served in the military, to obtain temporary residency status and eventually apply for citizenship. This bill is supported by a 62% majority of Foxless Republicans, but only 42% of GOP Foxies. Likewise, the campaign to raise the minimum wage to $10.10 per hour is supported by a majority of 56% of the Foxless, but only 33% of the Foxies. In both cases the Foxless Republicans are more closely aligned with the electorate at large. It is the Foxies who hold the extremist position on the fringes of the far right.

The study asks the question: Does Fox News cause ignorance, or do ignorant viewers prefer Fox News? The answer is not particularly clear cut and is likely a combination of the two. However, the real problems for the GOP come into the equation when the party tries to evaluate the opinions of their constituents as represented by the folks at Fox News. It’s clear that the Fox version of Republican views are far removed from reality. The study notes that party strategists may think that the Foxy…

“…represents the center of the GOP. Under that mindset, presidential candidates should adopt a policy platform that appeals to the average Fox News viewer. But that’s a mistake when the average Fox News member is an extreme conservative. […] This makes the Fox News echo chamber a hazard for the party. It creates extreme candidates under the guise that they are electable.”

The notion that Fox News is demonstrably harmful to the Republican Party is one that News Corpse examined five years ago in an article titled “Fox News Is Killing The Republican Party.” Some excerpts show that the results of the new Brookings/PRRI study somewhat belatedly affirm my own conclusions:

There is a case to be made that Fox News is demonstrably harmful to the Republican Party. In fact, it may be the worst thing to happen to Republicans in decades. That may seem counter-intuitive when discussing Fox News, the acknowledged public relations division of the Republican Party. Fox has populated its air with right-wing mouthpieces and brazenly partisan advocates for a conservative Republican agenda. They read GOP press releases on the air verbatim as if they were the product of original research. They provide a forum where Republican politicians and pundits can peddle their views unchallenged. So how is this harmful to Republicans?

Fox has corralled a stable of the most disreputable, unqualified, extremist, lunatics ever assembled, and is presenting them as experts, analysts, and leaders. These third-rate icons of idiocy are marketed by Fox like any other gag gift (i.e. pet rocks, plastic vomit, Sarah Palin, etc.). […] The problem is that by elevating bona fide nutcases, they are debasing honest and informed discourse. The mental cases are crowding out any reasonable voices that might exist amongst the more moderate Republicans (if there are any left). Fox appears to have made a tactical decision to permit the inmates full run of the asylum.

By doubling down on crazy, Fox is driving the center of the Republican Party further down the rabid hole. They are reshaping the party into a more radicalized community of conspiracy nuts. So even as this helps Rupert Murdoch’s bottom line, it is making celebrities of political bottom-feeders. That can’t be good for the long-term prospects of the Republican Party.

The more the population at large associates Republican ideology with the agenda of Fox News, and the fringe operators residing there, the more the party will be perceived as out of touch, or even out of their minds.

Recent events have borne out the worst of these considerations. Shortly after Fox News heralded the Deadbeat Rancher, Cliven Bundy, as a hero for confronting law enforcement officers with armed militia, three people, including two police officers, were murdered in Las Vegas, by a pair of Tea Party Terrorists. The perpetrators were the spitting image of the Fox News profile for conservative activists who virulently opposed what Fox told them was a rogue government that was devolving into a godless abyss of socialist deception and tyranny.

In addition, Fox News has stridently pursued a political agenda that seems to be intent on alienating the most critical voter demographic groups, including African-Americans, Latinos, women, and youth. And lately they even added their most loyal viewers to that list. The median age of the Fox News audience is 69 years old. That’s six years older than the median for their competition at CNN and MSNBC. And yet, Fox is embarking on an anti-Hillary Clinton crusade that is largely based on her age. That surely won’t go over well with the seniors tuning in to Fox.

Shameless self-promotion…
Get Fox Nation vs. Reality. Available now at Amazon.

So with Fox continuing to feature the fringiest characters they can find, and academic studies certifying the damage that this strategy will cause to their purported allies in the GOP, the closing paragraph of my 2009 article is as relevant today as it was then:

The mission of Fox News from its inception was to be more than just a voice of opposition to Democrats. It was to utterly crush the left end of the political spectrum leaving only a teetering right wing with no counter balance. Yet, despite the torrid embrace between Republicans and Fox News, it is apparent that Fox is the source of a sort of friendly fire that is decimating the GOP by exalting its most outlandish and unpopular players. And since Republicans have not been particularly popular anyway lately, the anchor being thrown to them by Fox can’t be all that helpful – – – Except to Democrats.